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Essays in the Public Philosophy y.$ /J/^' W^/7 UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARIES COLLEGE LIBRARY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from LYRASIS IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/essaysinpublicphOOinlipp BOOKS BY WALTER LIPPMANN A PREFACE TO POLITICS DRIFT AND MASTERY THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY THE POLITICAL SCENE LIBERTY AND THE NEWS PUBLIC OPINION THE PHANTOM PUBLIC MEN OF DESTINY AMERICAN INQUISITORS A PREFACE TO MORALS INTERPRETATIONS 1931-1932 INTERPRETATIONS I933-I935 THE METHOD OF FREEDOM THE NEW IMPERATIVE THE GOOD SOCIETY U. S, FOREIGN POLICY: SHIELD OF THE REPUBLIC U, S. WAR AIMS THE COLD WAR, A STUDY IN U. S. FOREIGN POLICY ISOLATION AND ALLIANCES: AN AMERICAN SPEAKS TO THE BRITISH ESSAYS IN THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY Wifh William O. Scroggs THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD AFFAIRS 1931 THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD AFFAIRS 1 932 THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY ESSAYS IN THE PUBLIC by WALTER LIPPMANN An Atlantic Monthly Press Book Little, Brown and Company • Boston • Toronto COPYRIGHT 1955, BY WALTER LIPPMANN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK IN EXCESS OF FIVE HUNDRED WORDS MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 55-6533 Published Fehntary ig^^ Reprinted February 1955 (twice) Reprinted March 1955 {tvuice) Reprinted October 1955 ATLANTIC-LITTLE, BROWN BOOKS ARE PUBLISHED BY LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS Published simultaneously in Canada by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To Helen They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they see nothing but sea. BACON. Advancement of Learning, II: VII, 5 Acknowledgments Once again I am deeply indebted to Edward Weeks, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, for his editorial criticism and for his help in the editing and the revision of the ttyit. I can only acknowledge gratefully this debt which I could not repay. I wish to thank Dean McGeorge Bundy of Harvard University for his very helpful criticism of the text; Mr. Stanley Salmen of Little, Brown for his reassurance and advice; Mr. Curtis W. Cate of the Atlantic Monthly Press for his constructive suggestions, and Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, Director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, who was consulted when the manuscript was finished, and who offered very prompt assistance with the footnotes and with certain of the logical problems. W.L. Washington, D.C. 1954 Contents BOOK ONE: The Decline of the West CHAPTER i: The Obscure Revolution 3 1. My Reason for Writing This Book 2. i^ij: The Revolutionary Year 3. Internal Revolution in the Democracies 4. The Paralysis of Governments CHAPTER 11: The Malady of Democratic States 16 1. Public Opinion in War and Peace 2. The Compulsion to Make Mistakes 3. The Pattern of the Mistakes 4. Democratic Politicians CHAPTER III: The Derangement of Powers 28 1. The Governors and the Governed 2. The People and the Voters 3. The Recently Enfranchised Voters CHAPTER IV : The Public Interest 41 1. What Is the Public Interest? 2. The Equations of Reality 1 Xll CONTENTS CHAPTER v: The Two Functions 47 1. The Elected Executive 2. The Protection of the Executive 3. The Voters and the Executive 4. The Enfeebled Executive CHAPTER VI : The Totalitarian Counterrevolution 58 1. Certain of Its Lessons 2. A Prognosis CHAPTER VII : The Adversaries of Liberal Democracy 63 1. Liberalism and Jacobinism 2. The Paradigm of Revolution 3. Democratic Education 4. Prom Jacobinism to Leninism 5. The Overpassing of the Bound BOOK two: The Public Philosophy CHAPTER VIII : The Eclipse of the Public Philosophy 9 1. On the Efficacy of Ideas 2. The Great Vacuum 3. The Neglect of the Public Philosophy 4. The Universal Laius of the Rational Order 5. The Rupture in Modern Times CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER IX : The Renewal of the Public Philosophy 113 1. The Capacity to Believe 2. Vor Example: The Theory of Property 3. For Example: Freedom of Speech 4. The Limits of Dissent 5. The Mirror of History 6. Man's Second Nature CHAPTER x: The Two Realms 141 1. The Confusion of the Realms 2. The Good in This World 3. The Law and the Prophets 4. The Realm of the Spirit 5. The Balance of Poivers 6. The Mechanics of the Balance CHAPTER XI : The Defense of Civility 160 1. The Thesis Restated 2. The Communication of the Public Philosophy 3. Constitutionalism Made Concrete 4. The Language of Accommodation 5. The Limits of Accommodation 6. The Death of God 7. The Mandate of Heaven Index 183 BOOK ONE The Decline of the West CHAPTER I The Obscure Revolution I. My Reason for Writing This Book During the fateful summer of 1938 I began writing a book in an effort to come to terms in my own mind and heart with the mounting disorder in our Western society. I was Hving in Paris at the time, and I had learned that the decision had been taken which was soon to lead Mr. Chamberlain and Monsieur Daladier to Munich. Little hope remained that another world war could be averted except by abject surrender, and yet there was no sure pros- pect that France and Great Britain would be able to with- stand the onslaught that was coming. They were unpre- pared, their people were divided and demoralized. The Americans were far away, were determined to be neutral, and were unarmed. I was filled with foreboding that the nations of the Atlantic Community would not prove equal to the challenge, and that, if they failed, we should lose our great traditions of civility,^ the liberties Western man had won for himself after centuries of struggle and which were now threatened by the rising tide of barbarity. I began writing, impelled by the need to make more intelligible to myself the alarming failure of the Western ^ Sir Ernest Barker, Traditions of Civility (1948). The phrase is from Coventry Patmore. 4 THE DECLINE OF THE WEST liberal democracies to cope with the realities of this cen- tury. I had done a draft of the book when the fall of France made it evident that we, too, must soon be en- gaged and, moreover, engaged alone if the Battle of Brit- ain was lost. But at this time the American people were as unpre- pared in their minds as in their military establishment. Could the democracies be rallied, could they be collected and nerved for the ordeal so that they would be equal to this mortal challenge? They had the superior assets. They had the numbers, the resources, the influence. But did they have the insight, the discipline to persevere, and the resolution to go through with it? Though they had the means, did they also have the will, and did they still know how? A second world war was making up out of the ruins and the failures of the first, and there was nothing to show that the Western democratic governments were in control of their affairs and capable of making the nec- essary decisions. They were reacting to events and they were not governing them. Could they avoid defeat and conquest without an exhaustion which would rend the fabric of Western society, without enormities of suffering which would alienate the masses of the people, and with- out resorting to measures of violence which might be- come inexpiable? They were so very late, and they were becoming engaged in they knew not what. They had re- fused to take in what they saw, they had refused to be- lieve what they heard, they had wished and they had waited, hoping against hope. It did not come easily to one who, like myself, had known the soft air of the world before the wars to rec- THE OBSCURE REVOLUTION 5 ognize and acknowledge the sickness of the Western Hberal democracies. Yet as we were being drawn unready and unarmed into the second of the great wars, there was no denying, it. seemed tojne, that there is ,a dgep^dis-- order in our society which comeg not from the machina- tions of our enemies and from the adversities of the hu- ,,.man_condition but from within ourselves,^ I was one of a large company who^^ felt that way. "Never doubting that the utmost resistance was imperative and that defeat would be irreparable and intolerable, they were a com- pany who knew in their hearts that by total war our world could not be made safe for democracy nor for the four freedoms.i W^,.were, I had come to see, not_w;ounded i5tiTsIc1t, and because_we_were failing to bring order- and peace tojiie_wDxId, we were beset by those who believed they have been chosen to succeed us. ' 2. 1 9 If: The Revolutionary Year In December 1941 I put the manuscript away, know- ing that so much was going to happen to the world and to me that if ever I went back to the book, it would be to start all over again. When I did come back to it after the war, the foreboding which had inspired it was in a terrible measure realized. Something had gone very wrong in the liberal demqaracies. They had, to be sure, defeated their enemies. They had avoided defeat and subjection. But they were unaW^_jta-inake_peace and to restore order. For the sernprl finn£_in a generRtinn they had failed to prevent a ruinous war, they had been unwilling to pre- 6 THE DECLINE OF THE WEST pare themselves to wage the war, and when at long last and at exorbitant cost they had managed to defeat their enemies, they had been unable to make peace out of their victories.
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